A new Japanese supercomputer called "K" is being hailed as the
world's fastest - three times more powerful than the previous holder of the
title.

K is built by the Japanese computer firm Fujitsu, based in Kobe's Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science. It is capable of making 8.2 quadrillion (a quadrillion is 1 followed by 15 zeroes) calculations per second - or, in computer jargon, 8.2 petaflops.

The rankings for the world's fastest computers are kept by a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, one Jack Dongarra. He releases a six-monthly list detailing the top 500 machines, as determined by a their ability to run a standard mathematical equation. The new list is released today.

K's performance is equivalent to one million linked desktop computers, according to Prof Dongarra, or more than its five closest competitors combined. It consists of 672 cabinets stuffed with circuit-boards, and its creators plan to increase that to 800 in the coming months. It uses enough energy to power nearly 10,000 homes and costs $10 million (£6.2 million) annually to run.

“It’s a very impressive machine,” Prof Dongarra said. “It’s a lot more powerful than the other computers.”

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After K and Tianhe-1A, the third fastest computer is Jaguar, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The USA holds a further four of the top 10 slots, although four of the top five are Chinese or Japanese. This is the first Japanese machine to hold the title of fastest since 2004.

According to The New York Times, the rankings change so rapidly that June 2008's fastest machine, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, has dropped to 10th place.

Supercomputers are used for various heavy-duty processing jobs, including climate modelling, earthquake simulations and stock-market predictions as well as nuclear research and weapons development.